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Russell Westbrook Angrily Slaps Away Teammate’s Hand During Nuggets’ Latest Loss

Russell Westbrook slapped away Vlatko Cancar’s hand in frustration during a timeout.

The Denver Nuggets have been struggling lately in Nikola Jokic’s absence, and Russell Westbrook isn’t taking all the losing well. In the fourth quarter of the Nuggets’ 129-119 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Monday, Vlatko Cancar tried to dap up Westbrook, only to have his hand slapped away.

There does appear to be some tension between Westbrook and Cancar. It’s safe to say they won’t be naming each other as their favorite teammate on the Nuggets.

Cancar has been really struggling to make a positive impact on the court for the Nuggets at the moment, having missed all of last season and much of this one with injury. The Slovenian had zero points (0-3 FG) and just three rebounds against the Bulls.

Westbrook, meanwhile, is having his own struggles. The former MVP had 14 points (5-14 FG), five rebounds, 10 assists, and one steal in this loss. He has been very inefficient lately, shooting 35.7% from the field and 26.1% from beyond the arc in his last five games.

Westbrook is now shooting 39.9% from the field this season in games that Jokic doesn’t play, and the Nuggets need him to be better than that. They really need the whole team to start playing better when the reigning MVP is out.

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The Nuggets have now lost three of their last four games without Jokic to drop to 45-28 this season. He’ll fortunately be back at some point during this upcoming five-game homestand, and the return can’t come quick enough if you’re a Nuggets fan.

The Nuggets have their fair share of doubters, and understandably so. They haven’t had a great season by their standards, but Westbrook believes the team is being doubted just because they have lost some high-profile games.

“Obviously some people only watch the [national] TV games, so they watched the Boston game, and everybody has a comment. But throughout the year, consistently, I didn’t hear any of this talk before. Now all of a sudden it’s like, oh, we lose to the Lakers… everybody’s losing their mind.

“And personally, internally, we don’t panic. Play the right way… Get stops. Run in transition. Because we’re the best transition team in the league. So when we get stops, you can’t load up [on Jokic] then. So our defense has gotta help our offense.”

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Well, the Nuggets’ struggles against the good teams are why they are being doubted. They have gone just 13-18 against teams with a .500 or above record this season and are 32-10 against the rest.

This Nuggets squad bashes the bad teams in the NBA but has a hard time beating the good ones. Considering they’re only going to face good teams in the postseason, that’s not a good sign. The Nuggets will get a chance to improve on that poor record next, as they take on the 40-31 Milwaukee Bucks at Ball Arena on Wednesday at 9 PM ET.